Image data captured by an image sensor or received from other data sources is often processed in an image processing pipeline before further processing or consumption. For example, raw image data may be corrected, filtered, or otherwise modified before being provided to subsequent components such as a video encoder. To perform corrections or enhancements for captured image data, various components, unit stages or modules may be employed.
Such an image processing pipeline may be structured so that corrections or enhancements to the captured image data can be performed in an expedient way without consuming other system resources. Although many image processing algorithms may be performed by executing software programs on central processing unit (CPU), execution of such programs on the CPU would consume significant bandwidth of the CPU and other peripheral resources as well as increase power consumption. Hence, image processing pipeline is often implemented as a hardware component separate from the CPU and dedicated to perform one or more image processing algorithms.
Images processed by the image processing pipeline may include several image data formats such as Bayer data format and three sensor data format (e.g., captured by three separate color sensors). Image data corresponding to different image formats may need to be processed using different processing algorithms thereby increasing the complexity of image processing pipeline.